"I've given you all she would have had," he said, as if in debate with himself that this was the last rebuttal against possible criticism. Beatrice glided over beside him; she looked out of the window, too, and then at her father. Something quite like tears was in his harsh eyes. "Daddy," she began with a quick indrawing of her breath, "do you think she'd have wanted me to have all--all this?" "Why wouldn't she?" he answered, taking her arm gently. He had always treated her with a formality amounting almost to awe. "I don't know--only I sometimes do almost think--would you suspect it? When I go to the office and watch those queerly dressed women bending over desks and earning a few dollars a week and having to live on it--and when I see how they manage to smile in spite of it--and how I waste and spend--and shed a great many tears--well, I wonder if it is quite safe to start as Steve and I are starting!" Then she threw her arms round him. "Steve won't believe that I've been serious, will he? Now, daddy dear, please go 'way and let me dress, for I'm 'way late." She kissed him almost patronizingly and he tiptoed out of her room, rather glad to get into his own domain--the majestic library with its partially arranged wedding gifts. "We're doing ourselves proud," he remarked to his sister, who had been rearranging them. "What I told Beatrice this morning. Only she is all nerves. She can't enjoy anything--it will be a relief to me, Mark, as well as a loss, when it is over." Her brother viewed her with a quizzical expression. Like the rest of the world his sister never fooled him. But like all supermen there was one human being in whom all his trust was centred, and who very often thus brought about his defeat. In his case, as with Steve O'Valley, it chanced to be Beatrice. Regarding her both men--merciless with their associates and dubbed as fish-blooded coroners by their enemies--were like gullible children following a lovely and willful Pied Piperess. But Mark's sister with her vanities and fibs irritated and amused him by turns. Perhaps he resented her sharing this material triumph instead of the tired-faced woman in the churchyard. "Do you remember the time you did the beadwork for the head carpenter's wife and when she paid you for it you spent the dollar for liquid rouge? Todd was so mad he wouldn't speak for a week," he chuckled, unkindly. "Don't say such things! Think how it would embarrass Bea. Of course I don't remember. Neither do you." "Oh, don't I? What's the harm recalling old times? I remember when you tried to make Todd a winter overcoat and he said it looked most as good as a deep-sea diver's outfit. My Hannah nearly died a-laughing." Fortunately Steve appeared, flourishing Beatrice's corsage by way of a greeting. "Aha, the conquerer comes. My dear lad, your lady love has just ousted me from her room, she'll be down presently. Belle, Steve and I are going into the den to smoke."